To Eat More, Guess Less

Kristen and I are completing our first year of transforming our backyard into an organic garden. The first year has been full of fun harvests and humiliating defeats.

If we’ve learned anything about gardening in the first year it is this principle: To eat more, you need to guess less.

  • We’ve learned that when we planted things is as important as what we want.
  • We’ve learned how to adapt our watering to the weather as opposed to just setting a timer.
  • We’ve learned how a baby weed is just as dangerous as a major one.
  • We’ve learned that is something gets bigger than you wanted, prune it right away or it’ll take over the garden.
  • We’ve learned that if we want to keep our harvest coming, we need to be patient in spreading out when we plant so it doesn’t all come at once.
  • We’ve learned that planting something in the wrong season really doesn’t work.
  • We’ve learned that your yield is directly proportional to the quality of soil where you plant at.

We didn’t know anything walking into this. So we guessed a lot. And we let our emotions get the best of us a few times.

But heading into the second year, we’ve learned a lot and documented what we did, we hope to eat a little bit more with less mistakes in 2011.

Isn’t this the same as with any other endeavor? You might guess and get something right by accident. But experience always yields a better result.


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3 responses to “To Eat More, Guess Less”

  1. Mike Lyons Avatar

    “But experience always yields a better result.”

    That must be why starting off in youth ministry is so…fun. I’m gaining my experience at the expense of kids.

    1. adam mclane Avatar

      That’s pretty much true.

  2. Jeffrey Dick Avatar

    I envy your winter planting. Only thing we are planting right now is tulip bulbs. Hope to expand our garden for next year and get some manure on the plot.

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